"Jewish Left" conference cares about everyone - except Jews (update) ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Wednesday, January 14, 2026

"Jewish Left" conference cares about everyone - except Jews (update)

A conference will take place next month at Boston University, the "Conference on the Jewish Left." It will host many anti-Zionist voices, Jewish and non-Jewish, from Peter Beinart to Yousef Munayyer.

It is already telling that the organizers treat anti-Zionism as the default meaning of “the Jewish left.” David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir were part of the Jewish left, yet no one associated with this conference would regard them as ideological ancestors. The term has been quietly redefined to exclude the very people who once embodied it.

But what interests me most is not the guest list. It is the slogan under which the conference is being held, a phrase we have all heard countless times: “None of us are free unless all of us are free.” Is this an authentically Jewish idea? Is it even a coherent one?

As a description of reality, it collapses almost immediately. There has never been a moment in human history when all people were free, and there never will be. Freedom is always partial, uneven, contested, and fragile. To claim that no one is free unless everyone is free is to define freedom out of existence. It means that until North Korea falls, until China has a different regime, until the Arab world grants equal rights to Jews and gays, until every prisoner everywhere is released, no one is free. Impossibility becomes the moral standard.

Ethical systems that render all incremental good meaningless tend to end either in paralysis or in performance. Why bother improving conditions in one place if the rest of the world remains broken? If none of us are free anyway, moral action becomes symbolic rather than substantive.

Judaism rests on the opposite premise. Moral action matters precisely because the world is broken. Saving one life matters even if others cannot be saved. Reducing suffering here matters even if suffering persists elsewhere. Obligation does not wait for universal resolution.

The slogan also smuggles in a false moral symmetry. It implies that all unfreedoms bind all people equally at all times. No one actually lives this way. The phrase is never applied universally. It is invoked selectively, aimed at particular causes, and quietly ignored everywhere else. No one believes their own freedom is negated by the existence of political prisoners in every dictatorship on earth. The slogan sounds absolute only because it is never meant to be enforced as such.

One can say that it is “just a slogan,” but slogans are not neutral. This one is used as a weapon. It pretends to be universal while being applied only to causes that happen to align with the anti-Zionist left. If the conference is to be taken seriously, its ethical commitments have to be taken seriously as well, and this slogan does not survive even cursory examination.

This is where Jewish ethics parts company most sharply with the sentiment. Jewish moral reasoning is structured rather than flattened. Responsibility radiates outward in concentric circles. You are more responsible for those closest to you, not because distant suffering is unimportant, but because moral obligation without prioritization becomes incoherent. Ethics requires triage. It requires proximity. It requires acknowledging limits.

Choosing to chant “free Palestine” while ignoring “free Iran” when you live nowhere near either is not a moral stance. It is political selectivity.

Jews claiming to care deeply about Palestinians while dismissing fellow Jews who live under the threat of Palestinian terror is not universal ethics. It is antisemitism, thinly veiled in the language of Jewish values.

The slogan is not a guide to moral action. It is a credential.

(UPDATE: The registration page indicated that the conference was on Saturday February 28, and I had originally written a more expansive article about how the organizers didn’t care about Shabbat. I regret the error.)